


Enough

by the_blue_fairie



Category: Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (Cartoon), Tangled (2010)
Genre: Angst, Despair, Gen, Nudism, Self-Hatred, and other insecurities, once again I am using Cassandra to explore my issues with body image
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 00:13:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29501136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_blue_fairie/pseuds/the_blue_fairie
Summary: In the dark prison of her own self-hatred, Cassandra collapses before Zhan Tiri - but may have some strength yet to stand in defiance of her.
Relationships: Cassandra & Zhan Tiri
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	Enough

Cassandra kneels within the blackness, a glint within a dark pupil, a sphere that rings her – and she, white as a touch of light…

The eye closes, cuts off the light, makes that pupil-glint, that star of white amid the black, even more insignificant.

She is ringed, black circlet circling her, and that circlet but a dot, a speck itself, and yet she is smaller, more meaningless, only glimpsed if the eye catches the light and the light is drowned within this ring –

Cassandra kneels, naked, white –

Her armor strewn in shards – shattered – bleeding blue –

Blue hair hanging about her face –

Her face fallen forward – neck weighed down as if by shackles – and yet unshackled, stark – the weight, reflections in her own eye…

Herself, a glint in another’s eye, a dancing flicker –

Nude-white as abjects to a demon, a great horned shadow, spectral-steep as mountaintop, smiling-down upon her acolytes –

Acolyte.

For Cassandra is alone.

As shadows, the other disciples, other acolytes, were dispelled.

But Cassandra carries her own shadow about her…

It does not dispel. It cannot die.

She weaves a night-cloak for herself with it, wears it even here…

It hangs about her like… peeling skin… blackened skin…

Her armor in shards about her, she still swathes herself, shrouds herself…

The circle is not a witches’ circle, no communion of hands in hands…

There is defiance in the witches’ circle, even in that, convent-habits cast away, clasping hands in a ring…

Here, the only rings are as the walls of Dis, circle-city, still.

Darkness clings about her like a habit, like a nun’s habit, hands as air, as smoke…

Inverse of convent-life and yet convent-confined still…

Defiance inverting defiance, so that her very defiance… confines her…

Dis.

Circle-city of Dante, Roman prism of Hades, as Hades – Hades, through convent-prism, as Hell, as, as, as…

It is through reflections in the eye that things take their shape.

In the prism of the Greeks, nakedness was not abjection – the athlete running with flashing knees, laurelled upon achieving… amazing things…

But not – for her –

Nakedness was not abjection – for the citizen, the man, glistening in the sun…

Even had she been born to the age of heroes glorified in stone, that glory would never have been hers…

Her nakedness _would_ have been abjection, the slave brought bound from Ilium for Agamemnon’s bed…

_Cassandra._

As Priam’s daughter…

As, as, as, as, as…

As nothing.

It is through reflections in the eye that things take their shape.

In one prism, _nothing_ is a void, a loneliness, nothing to grasp, nothing to compare to…

_Nothing to compare to._

In another, _nothing_ is a liberation.

If incomparable, then _she_ is incomparable.

No need to weave a nun’s habit of the _none_ , the nothingness. No need to wind it about herself in shame.

Let it fall away.

Nude as a young hero – the _as_ is in her power, she controls the _as_ – she draws blood from the earth, pulling forth her sword and striking at the chimera before her, the chimera with her many faces, many tongues…

Zhan Tiri, with her many faces protruding, leering, smiling…

Long snake’s tongue falling from the face on the chimera’s tail, long to lick her like a war-king, sliding serpentine over skin to inspire shame…

Falling – as Cassandra hacks it from the serpent’s mouth –

The blood that spills upon Cassandra’s shoulder does not burn.

A sugar-sweet smile smirks within a lion’s mane, baby-faced grotesqueness, while the goat-horns rear themselves from another face –

As many things, is Zhan Tiri. As many nightmares.

But nothing is as Cassandra.

And, nude as Bellerophon immortalized in stone, she is armored enough.


End file.
